Dropping The Decibels and Adding Carpet - Quiet, Cool, and Carpeted

We add carpet as well as lower the decibels to our street project Camaro

If you are an avid reader of this fine magazine, then you already know we are constantly showing ways to make your Bow Ties better. We install suspension systems to improve handling, build motors to lower e.t.'s, basically anything to make them perform at a higher level. Sometimes we can get so caught up in going fast that the vehicle loses all the creature comforts and becomes less street friendly. Take for example our Back To The Streets (BTTS) project Camaro. This '71 was a Lexan-windowed, gutted-doors, fiberglass-clipped bracket car that was all kinds of fun on the track, but could not be driven on the street.

A while back we took on the task of putting it back to a legit street machine. The drag-style suspension has been swapped out for a more corner carving-type system from Fat Man, the gnarly small-block was swapped out with a pump gas-friendly ZZ454 big-block backed by a Level-10 4L60E trans, the Lexan was replaced with real glass from National Parts Depot (NPD) and Mercer Count Vo-Tech School in New Jersey did the sheetmetal and paint work. The car is shaping up to be a great cruiser, but now we needed to start addressing the interior. As you can assume, the interior of this former drag car was pretty much gutted except for one seat and a six-point roll bar. Those items are now gone and a full interior is in the works.

Before we move forward with the interior installation, we wanted to lay down a layer of sound dampening material to go under the carpet to keep the cockpit nice and quiet. This project will also receive a quality audio system so adding a little bit of sound dampening material will allow it to perform at its full potential.

No matter how good speakers are at producing crisp sound, they will still have to over come the ambient noise in the interior. Case in point: Have you ever noticed that your stereo sounds clearer and the bass a little deeper when you stop at a light? That's because the road noise cancels out some of the frequencies in the music. The best way to quiet down the interior is to apply something over the largest metal surface in the interior, which is the floorboard. Typically cars had a few little squares of acoustical material and carpet, which does a decent job, but we want something better than decent for this project.

To accomplish that task we contacted Design Engineering Inc. (DEI), makers of the Boom Mat line of products. Boom Mat products are specifically designed to reduce road noise and dampen vibrations that plague older vehicles. Installing the products is pretty straightforward--peel and stick or spray and shoot, so most of your time will be spent disassembling your interior. Since our car was a stripped down drag car we had no real interior to deal with so we will start with ripping out the stock seats we found at a swap meet.

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18 Now our project will be nice and quiet while we drive down the road and our ears can just process the sounds desired, like the stereo or chatty passengers. Another added benefit to using these products is the insulation properties. The car will stay cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Not shown in the article was us spraying inside the doors with the Boom Mat Spray. This stuff goes on like a rubberized undercoating, but is way denser.

The build process behind Roadster Shop’s 1970 Chevrolet Camaro—nicknamed Rampage—is detailed and diverse. It stands apart from the Camaro herd with ease. Fitted with a host of race car inspired parts, this track ready street car is set to get the job done.

Al Unser, Jr. and Speedway Motors whipped up the G-Comp Unser Edition suspension system for the second-gen Camaro platform and put it to the test at the 2016 Falken Tire Super Chevy Muscle Car Challenge.